Healing during physician-patient consultation

OBJECTIVE: To determine the patient perceptions regarding healing during a physician-patient consultation. DESIGN: A questionnaire-based survey. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Family Practice Center of the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan, in June 2004. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A questionnaire was designed that included the demographic profile of patients comprising age, gender, education and occupation as well as questions in line with the study objective. It was administered to 111 patients, visiting outpatient department of the hospital. Participants were explained the study objective, a written consent was taken and full confidentiality was assured. RESULTS: The mean age of the study population was 27.86 years. Majority of the subjects were males with 68% having graduate or more education. A physician-patient consultation has healing properties for patients and physicians, according to 99 (89%) and 67 (65%) respondents respectively, with 65 (58%) having had experienced healing during the consultation process. The competence of a physician, individual attention given by a physician and a cool and calm attitude of a physician, were reported to increase healing in a physician-patient consultation according to 34 (30%), 32 (29%) and 13 (11%) respondents respectively. The unhelpful physician behavior, incorrect diagnosis and physician\u27s rude and arrogant attitude were reported to decrease healing according to 42 (37%), 15 (14%) and 14 (13%) respondents respectively. CONCLUSION: The study shows that a majority of the patients believe a physician-patient consultation has healing properties on its own, based on healing potential in the consultation process itself. Physicians must try to find ways to improve their ability to act as healers during consultation with patients

Cognitively-Inspired Model for Incremental Learning Using a Few Examples

Incremental learning attempts to develop a classifier which learns continuously from a stream of data segregated into different classes. Deep learning approaches suffer from catastrophic forgetting when learning classes incrementally, while most incremental learning approaches require a large amount of training data per class. We examine the problem of incremental learning using only a few training examples, referred to as Few-Shot Incremental Learning (FSIL). To solve this problem, we propose a novel approach inspired by the concept learning model of the hippocampus and the neocortex that represents each image class as centroids and does not suffer from catastrophic forgetting. We evaluate our approach on three class-incremental learning benchmarks: Caltech-101, CUBS-200-2011 and CIFAR-100 for incremental and few-shot incremental learning and show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art results in terms of classification accuracy over all learned classes.Comment: Added link to the code in the pape

Thermal Management of E–Motors in Electric Vehicle Application Employing LPTN Model

The electric motor is at the center focus as an alternative to the internal combustion engine for automotive applications since it does not produce greenhouse gas emissions and can contribute significantly to the reduction of fossil fuel consumption globally. As extensive research works are being done on electric vehicles at present, thermal analysis of traction motor is increasingly becoming the key design factor to produce electric motors with high power and torque capabilities in order to satisfy electric vehicle driving requirements. Motor losses cause active heat generation in the motor components and excessive temperature rise affects the electromagnetic performance of the traction motor. High torque and power requirements based on the driving conditions under urban and highway drive conditions demand high capacity motor cooling system in order to keep the temperature within the safe limit. Hence, it is critical to develop and design a temperature prediction tool to dynamically estimate the winding and magnet temperature and regulate cooling to remove excessive heat from the motor. Conventional thermal modeling of motors includes analytical and numerical modeling. Analytical modeling is done by using Lumped Parameter Thermal Network (LPTN) which is analogous to electric circuit and a fast method for predicting temperature. It uses heat transfer equations involving thermal resistances and thermal capacitances to analytically determine temperature at different nodes. Numerical modeling is done in two ways–Finite Element Analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics. Numerical modeling can produce more accurate results, but it requires more computational time. Since the temperature of motor components has to be predicted very quickly, i.e. during driving, LPTN is more effective because LPTN can quickly predict temperature based on the heat transfer equations. This thesis proposes an LPTN model that predicts motor temperature and regulates the required coolant flow rate simultaneously. Thus, it is able to dynamically predict the temperature. MATLAB Simulink has been used for simulation of the LPTN model for a laboratory PMSM prototype. The thermal resistances in the thermal network model have been obtained from the motor geometrical parameters. The electromagnetic loss data with respect to torque and speed were taken as input, and thus the temperature results of motor components have been found. The future work will be to implement this model into full scale prototype of the motor

Knowledge, attitude and practice regarding immunization among family practice patients

Objective: To determine the knowledge, attitude and practices about immunization among family practice patients. Design: A questionnaire based survey. Patients and Method: A questionnaire was developed in line with the study objectives. It was administered to patients visiting family physicians, after they were administered, informed consent and assurance with regards to confidentiality was provided. Epi-info and SPSS software was used for data management. Results: A total of 97 patients were surveyed. The majority were men (59.8%) with a mean age of 29.69 years. Majority was unmarried (51.5%), with graduate and post-graduate education (73%), and in government and private service (48%). Vaccination was believed to prevent disease by 94%. Majority was informed about immunization by doctors and parents (94%). Media provided information about immunization to 62% of the patients. A 58% would recommend vaccination to others. Source about harmful effects of immunization was provided by friends and parents (80%). Hurdles against immunization were lack of education and lack of funds according to 43 (45%) and 29 (30%) respondents respectively. Education of population and mothers were ways to promote immunization according to 23 (24%) and 19 (20%) respondents respectively. Immunization exists against Hepatitis C and Malaria according to 35 (36%) and 10 (10%) respondents respectively. Immunization were received against polio, measles and hepatitis B by 86 (89%), 51 (53%) and 26 (27%) respondents respectively. Conclusion: The study results have identified a strong need for education program for the masses about immunization, since major deficiencies have been identified. Further studies are strongly recommended along with debate on this important public health issue

IMPACT OF CUSTOMER BRAND RELATIONSHIP THROUGH FACEBOOK ON THE LEVEL OF CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

In the last few years customer engagement has received asignificant attention of researchers and marketers’ because there is arise in the awareness of customers as value recipient to value cocreator.Two hypotheses were developed i.e. 1) Customer BrandRelationship through facebook impacts on the level of customerengagement. 2) There is a gender difference on the variable ofcustomer engagement on facebook. A survey was designed by takingten different brands of cloths that have their web pages on onlinesocial media. A sample of 211 individuals was approached to measurethe engagement status of 10 clothing brands through online socialmedia. Customer Engagement Scale (CES; Justina Malciute, 2012)was used to measure the impact of customer brand relationshipthrough Facebook on the level of Customer Engagement. Regressionanalysis was performed to measure the results. The results of thestudy suggest that customer brand relationship through facebookwill impact the level of customer engagement. Moreover, no genderdifference was found on the variable of customer engagement onfacebook

DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENERAL EMOTIONAL LABOR SCALE – URDU (GELS – U)

The purpose of the current research is to develop a scale thatmeasures Emotional Labor in Urdu and the study describes theprocedure followed to develop the General Emotional Labor Scale– Urdu (GELS – U). The process of scale development was brokenup into different phases. The first phase of scale construction dealtwith item generation and the second involved conducting a pilotstudy. The sample for the pilot study consisted of 308 individuals.Based on the results of the pilot study the items of the scale werereduced from 49 to 30 using factor analysis and item-totalcorrelations. The last phase of the study entailed normsdevelopment and establishing the reliability of GELS – U. For thispurpose, the sample consisted of 505 individuals. The internalconsistency of GELS – U was found to be 0.810, and the test-retestreliability was 0.871. Thus, the General Emotional Labor Scale –Urdu was developed as a measure of emotional labor in the nationallanguage of Pakistan – i.e. Urdu. Such a scale can be useful fornot just researchers but for organizations in the service sector aswell. This will help understanding in the performance of emotionallabor, its effects on employees and the possibility of trainingemployees who might need to perform such labor

Comparison of the Mesio-Distal Widths of the Maxillary and Mandibular Central Incisors Between Cleft Lip and Palate and Non Cleft Lip and Palate Individuals

Objective: To compare the mesiodistal widths of the maxillary and mandibular central incisors of cleft lip and palate individuals with non-cleft individuals, in a local population. Methodology: A total of 80 casts (40 of cleft patients and 40 normal) were selected by the department of orthodontics from January, 2021 to February, 2022, dividing them it into 4 groups by consecutive non-probability technique. The mesiodistal width of the maxillary and mandibular central incisors was measured with vernier caliper.  Independent t test was applied to compare the mesiodistal width of maxillary and mandibular central incisors between normal and cleft patients. Descriptive statistics were calculated for all four groups. Results: The mean MD width for the maxillary central incisors was 6.58 ± 1.16mm and 7.67 ±1.18mm for the CLP and control group respectively. The mean MD width for the mandibular central incisors was 4.22± 0.91 mm and 4.67 ± 0.9 mm for the CLP and control group respectively. The student t test showed a significant difference in the MD width of both the maxillary and mandibular central incisors between the CLP and control group. Conclusion: Patients suffering from cleft lip and palate are associated with diminutive central incisors in both jaws